Rant: My furnace decided to quit during that cold snap last week

I woke up Tuesday morning and the house in Lethbridge was freezing, maybe 12 degrees inside. The old high efficiency unit just stopped blowing warm air completely. I called a local HVAC company and they found a cracked heat exchanger, which they said is a full replacement job. It's going to cost about $4500 to get a new one installed next Monday. Has anyone else had to deal with a surprise furnace failure like this in the middle of winter? What did you do for heat while waiting for the fix?

3 comments

3 Comments

bennett.harper2mo ago

Man that's brutal timing. Did you have any space heaters you could use or were you just bundled up? We had ours go out a few years back and it was miserable. We ended up buying a couple cheap electric heaters from the hardware store just to keep one room warm. It's a huge bill to get hit with out of nowhere, but at least you got it sorted fast.

blake7922mo ago

Yeah those little plug-in heaters are a lifesaver in a pinch, bennett.harper. Read a thing last week saying sales for them always spike during the first real cold snap because so many systems fail under the strain. Smart move just heating one room, keeps the cost down a bit even if the electric bill still takes a hit.

reese_hayes712mo ago

Yeah the one room thing is smart. My buddy's furnace died and he just camped in the living room with his dog and a space heater for like three days. Said it was kinda fun, like indoor camping.